Are the men still clapping?

Why do I always make men look like monsters and women like saints? Is that what I always do? So many men are angry with me. Women are mean, ask Adam. I know. There are bad women. And there are good guys too. But as a woman, sometimes you can’t blame me if I see things just like that, as a woman, I mean. I’m sure we have been at this for a while now, doing the back and forth on who is badder, the guy or the girl.

When we swig stories, haven’t we discovered that bloody noses are a common denominator in relationships? Yeah. Women are bad. Girls are badder. That is one thing we can agree on but let me not bore you with what you already know or anger you more with what you are already angry about.

Today, I’m not really going to hit the men, ahem, at least not like that. Let’s just say I want to draw their attention to some obvious facts they daily ignore. Now, I must confess that this piece was triggered by a text message joke I received from a co-conspirator. Here goes; Eleven people were hanging on a rope under a helicopter.

There were 10 men and a woman. The rope was not strong enough to carry them all. So they decided that one of them had to leave, otherwise they were all going to fall. They were not able to agree on who that person would be. Until the woman among them gave a touching speech.

She said that she would voluntarily let go of the rope because as a woman, she was used to giving up everything for her husband and kids or for men in general. She said she was used to always making sacrifices and getting little or nothing in return.

As soon as she finished her speech, all the men started clapping… All the men, of course, dropped to their untimely deaths and she flew away alone in the chopper. Well, what can a woman do? That is the power of a woman, the brand only smart men recognize and acknowledge. If there had been at least one of those 10 excitable men who could see beyond that woman’s ‘moving’ speech, he would be alive today.

But don’t we all know that men don’t do much thinking when they see women they want? In my mind’s eyes, I could see the woman in that joke wearing a very short skirt, no bra and a top with a plunging neckline.

How do you reason with a man drooling over ample cleavage? If you scream ‘Praise the Lord’, he won’t shout Halleluyah because he is far away in la-la land. The woman in that joke, I’m sure, also had smooth skin, probably fair skin. All 10 men simply threw their thinking caps in the air or how else do you explain why they all forgot that they did not have third hands and that once they started clapping they were going to drop to their deaths? That is exactly my point.

A smart woman can make a man do whatever she wants him to do. We are that powerful. Oh, don’t even try to disprove it. Just save your energy for the next time a woman is delivering a speech and you need all your wits about you to hang on to life instead of clapping your way into an early grave.

Of course, I’m the first to admit that there is something comforting about the sight of a woman. We were created like that. Every woman has the right gadgets to comfort a man, make him feel safe, give him life.

That is the reason baby boys suck breasts more fervently than baby girls and when you wean him off the breasts at 12 months, what does he do? As soon as he is old enough to recognise that there are other breasts apart from mummy’s own, he goes breast-hunting. Poor men, you can’t wean them off breasts.

They need to be regularly nourished. Who’s complaining? Don’t forget that this piece is about alerting men to the dangers of their bad wild ways on the one hand and the powers of a woman on the other. No man should delude himself that his woman is powerless.

If you doubt my sermon, ask yourself how much you spend on your daughter and compare it with how much your sons cost. Even your little tyke is twisting you round her pink fingers. A smart man works all day, sits on his butt for eight-straight hours trying to seal a deal.

He finally gets it in the can, tired but happy. He drives home and sights these half-clad daughters of Eve along the road and stops to give one a ride. He convinces himself he’s celebrating his new deal. Before you know it, he is expending more energy and spending money that is not yet in the bank.

I see my sisters who have not much to show in terms of source of income living in posh apartments in choice areas of town and driving wonder-on-wheels. Who’s paying? Men who are clapping when they should be holding on firmly to the rope. Well, the girls are having fun and the men are not complaining.

I just feel like warning them today. Men should stop thinking that it’s a man’s world. Please, it’s women’s device to keep you clapping. It suits even me to convince men that it’s their world. But it isn’t.

My brother summed up this whole clapping-when-you-shouldn’t business when he said ‘men are forever prostrating for their women when the women are not riding them.’ I’m still trying to decode that one. Are the men still clapping?

Runaway dads: The plight of women

The rate at which our young women are becoming single mothers is increasingly alarming. Apart from widows, it’s like we are having single moms almost at equal proportion to married women. And this unpleasant situation is a consequence of men and their irascible moral attitude. Many of them chose to be irresponsible, philandering and uncaring fathers.

I can’t count the number of single moms whose husbands just disappeared from home not because of any serious acrimony or domestic violence but because they wanted to explore their masculine potentials in a wrong way.

There are men who operate on-and-off schedule in their matrimonial homes. They stay away for days or weeks, lurking for free and available women with less or nil responsibilities to bear. Some of such men have initiated ‘secret’ family life with other women elsewhere while telling their wives they are in pursuit of business opportunities or on official tour of duty.

These are men on the fringes of abandoning their homes.
Surprisingly, many of these runaway dads abandoned their homes leaving their wives with the burden of taking sole responsibility for their children. They do so with callous disposition as if it’s the right thing to do. They stopped paying the rent.

They are not concerned about their children’s schooling, feeding, clothing and medicare. Any man relishing in this kind of unfatherly attitude won’t be blessed at the instance of the children.

Let’s agree they have issues with their wives and they opted out of the marriage unofficially, must they extend their grievances to the innocent children? Supposed the man is suspecting or questioning the paternity of the children, can’t he go for DNA to authenticate his claim? Leaving women alone to shoulder the heavy burden paying the bills is very unfair, wicked and ungodly.

Some men might have different stories to tell on why they quit, it’s very possible but I insist it is sheer callousness to abandon the children. Some men have told me about their move to have the children live with them without their moms. I told them it’s pretty difficult especially if the children are still of school age. No woman would trust a ‘strange woman’ enough to occupy her space for her children while she lives.

The way and manner some men quit the home on the pretext of prospecting for business or official trips wouldn’t encourage the women to trust them with their children. Some men had accused their wives of ‘trapping’ them with pregnancies even when they had no such plans to marry at all.

They might have tenable grouses with their women, yet, it’s no justifiable reason to burden the women with the sole responsibility of caring for the children.
A stock in trade with such runaway dads is that they tell lies a lot.

A clearing and forwarding business magnate abandoned his wife and two children barely six years into the marriage and went on philandering. When this incident happened in 2007, he was enjoying a big boom in his business.

She rented houses for a number of his girlfriends, bought expensive gifts for many of them. While the financial honeymoon lasted, he didn’t erect any building for himself. He lavished millions of naira on social life and emptiness.

As you read this article, his first daughter is preparing for admission into the university while the boy is also in SS2. He couldn’t send a dime for their school fees or upkeep in the last five years. This leaves his legitimate wife stranded, struggling to cope. Meanwhile, he is hibernating in a two-bedroom apartment of an older woman who also have two children for him apart from children from other women. From this man alone, our society has five single moms who are now struggling with life issues on their own. He lied to each of them to put them in the family way.

A network marketer was abandoned by her husband shortly after she delivered her fifth child. Barely three months later, he returned home to pick some of his personal effects and left the next day. He told his bewildered wife that “your mates are out there taking good care of their men. They even appreciate the fact that they are lucky to have men around them who make them feel good. All you know is to ‘breed’ children like a pig.”

When I contacted the man, his response was so weird and funny. Hear him: “Oga, I don tire for dat woman joor. I wan enjoy ma life small. With five children, wetin I go do to feed them? I dey where I dey enjoy. You don hear am before say man dey collect money for enjoyment? Na dat kind level I dey so.”

At a relationship forum in July, I advised parents to start grooming their boys to becoming men and from men to becoming loving, caring husbands and responsible fathers. It is not women alone that should be molded; men, too, need proper mentoring and grooming for future life. A well-groomed man won’t abuse or harm his wife. He will always have a sense of caution in his indulgences. It is then we can have a decent society that has value for home (grooming place for future leaders) and consequently reduce the spiraling incidence of young women becoming single mothers.

Big babes, cold bedroom

She has come a long way. She started small, very small in fact but life has been kind to her. She has found favour with God and man. Today, the young awkward marketing executive is the Chief Operating Officer of a multi-million naira concern. She has men, her father’s age, calling her Madam and women, more beautiful than her, scrambling for her attention and approval. She is a force you can’t ignore in her industry.

Though many women wish they were in her shoes but her life is not all the colours of the rainbow that we all see. She is married with children and the last line of her profile reads like that of most women in her shoes: she is happily married with children.

Hmm, not totally true. Not totally false. Married with children yes but the happy part? Not always. But come to think of it, which marriage is happy all the time? Some days you are happy, others you just wish you’d married someone else. And there are those days you want to shoot him, even if it’s in the leg or with rubber bullets. Not a biggie. Nobody should go into marriage hoping to be happy every single second.

Happily ever after I think is a concoction from Denise Robins’ romance kitchen. Oh, all those romance novels we read and believed! Yours sincerely read so many Mills and Boons I actually believed all the purple prose about tall rich, dark and handsome romantic man myth. If you are a fan of M&B, you’ll remember all the favourite authors now: Carole Mortimer, Anne Mather, Penny Jordan. Are you smiling? I am.

The things those writers filled our heads with. Come back to the present, into the life of the lady boss and the man she married. Welcome to the life of the successful career married woman. And the fine-boy-no-pimples guy she married.

Hear her husband.

‘These days I’m not sure if I’m married or not because my wife is married to her job. I virtually have to book appointments to see her. Sex is no longer spontaneous. It’s like there is a roster somewhere for making love to my own wife o. For instance, Mondays are totally not sex days. Fridays are not either. Saturday mornings, she wants to sleep so I cannot check out my property. And the week before a board of directors meeting is worse.

She falls asleep surrounded by laptop, I-pad, tons of files, her glasses still perched on the bridge of her nose. I can’t even sneak a touchy-feel. We have a full compliments of kitchen staff now complete with chef who spices every dish to high heavens.

But nobody makes vegetable soup like my wife. I miss the aroma of her ‘akara’ waking me up on Saturday mornings. Now, if two of the reasons you married your wife is the great sex and her cooking prowess, what do you do when she becomes a big girl, with a ninedigit salary, who neither cooks nor satisfies you in bed? Is someone going to blame me if I start getting some on the side?’ Now, why do I get this strong feeling that bros is already doing full-scale extracurricular activities? You see, when a man threatens to take a second wife, 60 per cent of the time, he has already taken one.

He’s just looking for an opportunity to bring her in. So, when the husband of the lady boss reels out a long list of his reasons why he deserves a girlfriend, hmmn, I can bet my leave allowance that he is already getting thoroughly serviced by one impressionable undergraduate or even his secretary. All the same, let’s consider his complaint sheet without imagining him in a nonmissionary position with his secretary.

I truly sympathise with men married to career women especially the one who have risen to the top of the ladder. They are rare breeds and even bigger boys than their big-girl-wives. To marry a big babe doesn’t take much, which is why a lot of men marry them in the first place. It is glamorous and men these days consciously seek out the big babes. Check out the wedding invitation cards you currently have and the weddings you had attended in the last six months.

You will find the brides are bankers, doctors, even entrepreneurs. Guys suddenly prefer the already made girls, not just the ones who come from old money or who are daughters of politicians. Many times, I must admit, the unemployed girls don’t get as many proposals as the career girls.

But somehow, after marriage and as the years go by, the husband of the lady boss starts complaining and one wonders why. Could it be that he couldn’t see beyond his happy nose of long ago? I mean, a 29-yearold bride doing well in a bank will eventually grow into a General Manager and that post certainly won’t come with hours or responsibilities. As the perks increase, so will the meetings and official trips and dinners and meeting with clients. Most men just generally assume that if their fine wives have dinner with a rich client, the rich client will have their wives for dinner. And we all know what those kinds of thoughts do to men’s heads. Poor folks.

They just aren’t ever prepared for the brighter years and that’s when the complaints start. Men are not like women in any way, are they? When a woman marries a poor man and he becomes rich, we just slide smoothly, effortlessly into the role of the wife of a big boy.

We move from buying second hand dresses to designer ones. We move from cheap costume jewellery to dainty gold and even diamonds. We learn the movements and adapt to new neighbourhoods. We even learn new ways to monitor our men’s movements. But a man is not really wired to tag along.

Yet, since sh*t happens and this is a new world, the husband of the lady boss just must adapt. It’s just the way the cookies crumble. And the best way to adapt is to own both the assets and liabilities.

Now, the lady boss needs to do a lot of work to keep her man, her home and her marriage. Yes, she can’t do ‘efo riro’ and ‘akara’ as often as bros wants, but she must make out time to cook her husband’s favourite dishes as often as she can.

Dear, just get the kitchen staff to lay out the ingredients. Next step: get into your hottest pants or shorts and make sure bros is around to watch you sweat it out making his vegetable soup. Roll all your assets as you move up and down.

Let him gasp. Let him drool but you don’t have to give it all up that night. This is just the cooking phase. The other department you must man with all your strength is the bedroom. You cannot allow those little girls outdo you in the territory where you have more cognate experience. Deploy those assets and give him the service of his life. If he’s one of those guys who likes to hang out with his friends on Fridays, Thursday night is your execution date. Show him undiluted service.

Shake him up. Make him pant. Make him beg. Take him to the seventh heaven and let him ride back on your back, sweating. Even if he does not cancel his date with the boys, you are almost sure he can’t deliver the goods with girls. Right? Give him something to think about all day. Let him doze at his desk. Let him look forward to a next time. Beg him to make out time to accompany you on official trips once in a while.

Take him far from the madding crowd and give him the treat of his life. Swim at night together if you do and …well, I can’t say everything here. Even when you are tired, you know great sex is great exercise and you need to work out, don’t you? See? It’s a win-win situation. No matter how hard you work at work, you must protect the territorial integrity of your marriage.

Is your husband on loan?

You must have at one time or the other suspected your husband was having an affair. No big deal, most men do. The occasional fling to relieve their youth or assure themselves that the strands of grey hair on their temples have not affected them ‘downstairs’.

As long as they ‘always come back,’ what’s a roving eye between husband and wife?
Only the deal becomes big when the affair graduates from being an occasional fling.

When your husband goes a step further from the late nights, weekends outside the matrimonial, you can’t help but worry. When he stops telling you where he is going or where he’s coming from, you should worry.

So what do you do when you find out your husband is going steady with another woman? May be when he has gone as renting and furnishing an apartment for her. Do you burst an artery and end up a stroke patient? Would you scream, tear your hair and threaten to send hired killers after her and your shameless husband? Would you accept defeat and pack out? Is there really a cut-and-dried, acceptable way to react to the threat of the other woman?

All these questions chased one another round my brain when I heard how some women handled such situations.
Actually, the first instance is the one that really started this topic. The woman, let’s call her Mrs. X had found out that her husband, Mr. X has rented and furnished a mini-flat in Ishaga (in Ifako/Ijaiye local government) for his girlfriend, Miss B. That Monday, the randy husband had spent the night at his girlfriend’s place.

The following morning, still his bathrobe, the secret lovers received an august visitor – Mrs. X. She arrived in her Toyota Corolla car, surprisingly Mr. X and Miss B. No introductions were needed.

Mrs. X pounced on Miss B. dealing severe blows on the surprised lady. When the latter saw that Mrs. X was ready to send her to the great beyond, she fought back. At the end of the battle, Mrs. X was stripped by Miss B. while Mr. X roared that Mrs. X should not return to their matrimonial home.

That was one woman’s way of defending her territory and she got thoroughly beaten and disgraced for it. I think she had it coming too. How can any woman descend that low, and for a man’s sake? What if she suffered a mortal blow like ruptured spleen or spinal cord injury? She could have died, you know. And what would have become of the territory she desperately wanted to protect?

To physically attack your husband’s mistress is a totally foolish thing to do. It’s very demeaning and I tell you, no man is worth that trouble. He’d either do a cowardly disappearing act or issue a decree banning you from your matrimonial home.

As I was busy castigating this hot woman, one of my friends told me another tactic used by another woman on detecting that her husband has a mistress. She was angry and ready to do anything to stop the affair. She sent thugs after the girl. They gave her a thorough beating, dragged her out of her car and burnt it to ashes.

The snag in that tactic is that, it may endear your husband more to his mistress, especially if you had earlier threatened to deal with the other woman. You could still lose out or end up in a police cell if the thugs point you out.

One woman decided to cut her losses. As far as she knew, antagonizing his mistress was not the solution especially because the other woman was older and richer than her. She warmed her way into the mistress’ favour.

“What’s my own? She was ‘spending’ my husband, so why can’t I spend her money? At first, my husband was wary, afraid I was up to a mischief but he soon found out I had no time for lost battles. The woman was too old to have babies for my husband and she was loaded, always jetting around the globe. At the end, she helped me expand my business and one of my children in studying abroad on her bill.”

It wasn’t easy taking a step like that but what the hell; you might as well make the best of a bad situation. If your husband is on loan, make the best of it.
Readers’ rejoinders are welcome.